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Attending university is a very demanding and costly experience, so it is important to get everything you can out of it.

What would you do if you got to class on exam day, and your professor invited everyone to go on a walk down the street to pick up her daughter from school?

That is what happened to the student in this story, but she didn’t have time to waste, so she asked if she could stay behind and take the exam without delay. The professor agreed, but now this student is being told that she was out of line for asking.

Personally, I think she did the right thing. She did not have the time or desire to go on that walk, so she stood up for her needs. Read through the full story below and see what you think about it.

AITA for insisting my professor let me take the exam instead of making me walk to pick her child up from school?

I (20f) go to a small liberal arts college. I am in my junior year but I’m trying to put myself on track to graduate a semester early with honors.

She is deeply involved in this stuff.

I’m a psychological science major and spend a lot of time in that department. I work in the psychology department, the sociology/anthropology department, and for the admissions office.

I’m currently working with a professor to set up my own research project that hopefully you all will one day see published (cross your fingers for significant results).

Does she have a minute to spare throughout the day?

I’ve designed this project mostly by myself with some oversight from the professor and I’m now introducing it to the lab team to carry out.

I take 4 classes (one with a lab) and 1 is a 300 level class while the rest are 200 level. That being said I’m extremely busy and don’t have a lot of extra time to mess around.

Her exam schedule must be brutal.

If I can manage to find extra time it’s either spent working on projects, eating, sleeping, or sometimes with my partner and/or friends.

This brings us to yesterday where I had an exam for my anatomy/physiology course. We had taken the same exam the day before in a collaborative group, but today we were to take it alone and make sure we went more in depth on the questions.

What does this have to do with the class?

I get to class and look over her notes on the exam for yesterday before taking a seat and waiting for her to pass out the exams (this is scheduled class time).

She continues joking around with students for another 10 minutes before telling us that we’re all going on a short walk to the local elementary to pick up her child as some sort of ‘fun’ field trip.

This is a very reasonable question, I think.

I, in what I think is reasonably respectful way, ask her if this is required and if I can just take the exam.

She goes on to say that her child is very excited to come to this class, but once again I ask if I can just take my exam instead so that I can leave early so I have extra time during my day.

Good, now she can get the exam done with no issues.

She agrees to let me stay in the lab and do the test while everyone else goes to pick up her kid. I’m the only one who stays behind, but I was fine with that.

For extra clarification, this was around 2:30 and due to my schedule I didn’t have time to eat lunch today and it was very hot outside and had been given no previous notice of this excursion.

I can totally see how it would be annoying to be asked to do this type of thing during class.

In my head, I find it disrespectful of her to come to class and waste my time when I pay her the respect to not do the same for her.

Additionally, I pay around $15,000 a semester to go here and don’t agree with her using class time meant for learning to do activities like pick her child up from school.

Some people aren’t as busy as her.

I mentioned my displeasure to another classmate today though and they found it ridiculous that I disagreed with her using the time to pick up her kid and insisting I stay behind to just get the exam over with.

AITA?

While it is fine that some people wanted to go on that walk, there is nothing wrong with wanting to get what you pay for from school. This young lady clearly wants to get the most out of her education, and that means asking for what she is entitled to.

Read on to see what the people in the comments think about this situation.

If it happens again, she should report the professor.

Was this a one-time thing or a regular occurrence?

Child care can be hard, but you can’t waste the student’s time.

It does seem like poor planning on the part of the professor.

This commenter says the professor is being irresponsible.

Students don’t pay thousands of dollars for a class only to go out for a walk. I can completely see why this would be seen as a waste of time.

If she didn’t say anything, the professor would just assume that everyone was happy with it. It is good that this student stood up for herself.